Can I read Chapter 1. The Lyric Subject on EtoBox?

Chapter 1. The Lyric Subject is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Chapter 1. The Lyric Subject about?

IMPLICITLY OR explicitly, the speaker in a lyric poem is an "I." This figure is a generic "I," not to be confused with an extralinguistic entity. The "I" in discourse is a universal, an indexical function. In Hegel's terms, "when I say 'I,' 'this individual I,' I say quite generally 'all I's,' every one is what I say, every one is 'I,' this individual I" (1967, 154). Yet the poetic "I" is also heard as an individuated voice, for we can "hear" the distinct voices of different poets working in the same language and at the same historical moment, with the same linguistic and cultural necessities and resources. The audibility of a distinctive written voice is a remarkable phenomenon: how does an individuated "I" become audible through the universal "I" of language in poetry, a discourse that foregrounds conventions and rules? Clearly, the generic "I" and the individuated "I" cannot to be understood as oppositional: the "I" in poetry is both the generic "I" of language and an individuated "I" sounded by the materials of language. My argument is that the experienced effect of an individuated speaker lies in an experience of linguistic materials that are in excess of what can be categoric

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Published

2009

Language

EN